Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Social Media Gaps

We have gaps in Social Media / Social Networking that need to be addressed; and these unaddressed needs open great business opportunities; some of these gaps are:

The intranet versus extranet gap: we all know social networking can bring benefits inside and outside the “organization” and sensible, conditional, contextual, rule driven connection among these two worlds (social networking inside and outside the organization) can bear great benefits; I wrote a hopeful post about this long time ago.

The content here, community there gap: companies spend a lot of time and effort creating amazing content; yet their community interaction seems to happen somewhere else and this shall not benefit that (just check GE's Web Site and one of their GE Facebook Pages as an example)

The experience gap: a company / brand embodies a style, a mission, a feeling, a way of being.. and they invest heavily in keeping that style or feeling consistent throughout their presence in the world (Web, Magazines, Stores) Think about Apple and Nike as some of the best examples; yet when it comes to Social Networks / Communities companies face tough choices: Do they accept the experience constrains of the most popular SNs? (check the Apple Ipod page in FB) when the experience they would really like to deliver is much better than that? but how can ignore the incredible number of people participating in those networks? (Facebook Connect and similar efforts allow addressing some of these challenges).

I agree that on the business side we need to have companies as a whole embracing customer centric principles; and even structuring themselves around the customer (versus lines of business, which do not line up with customer interests). However I think the technical/capability and execution side is also falling short and this also opens those business opportunities I was mentioning above.